Display Technology

1. Display Technology • Images stolen from various locations on the web...

2. Cathode Ray Tube

3. Cathode Ray Tube

4. Raster Scanning

5. Electron Gun

6. Beam Steering Coils

7. Color

8. Shadow Mask and Aperture Grille

9. Liquid Crystal Displays

10. Liquid Crystal Displays

11. DLP Projector

12. LCoS • Liquid Crystal on Silicon • Put a liquid crystal between a reflective layer on a silicon chip

13. Grating Light Valve (GLS) • lots (8000 currently) of micro ribbons that can bend slightly • Make them reflective • The bends make a diffraction grating that controls how much light where • Scan it with a laser for high light output • 4000 pixel wide frame ever 60Hz

14. Grating Light Valve (GLS)

15. Digistar 3 Dome Projector

16. VGA • Stands for Video Graphics Array • A standard defined by IBM back in 1987 • 640 x 480 pixels • Now superseded by much higher resolution standards... • Also means a specific analog connector • 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector

17. VGA Connector

18. Raster Scanning

19. VGA Timing Horizonal Dots 640 Vertical Scan Lines 480 Horiz. Sync Polarity NEG A (μs) 31.77 Scanline time B (μs) 3.77 Sync pulse length C (μs) 1.89 Back porch D (μs) 25.17 Active video time E (μs) 0.94 Front porch ______________________ ________ ________| VIDEO |________| VIDEO (next line) |-C-|----------D-----------|-E-| __ ______________________________ ___________ |_| |_| |B| |---------------A----------------| 60Hz vertical frequency

20. VGA Timing Horizonal Dots 640 Vertical Scan Lines 480 Horiz. Sync Polarity NEG A (μs) 31.77 Scanline time B (μs) 3.77 Sync pulse length C (μs) 1.89 Back porch D (μs) 25.17 Active video time E (μs) 0.94 Front porch ______________________ ________ ________| VIDEO |________| VIDEO (next line) |-C-|----------D-----------|-E-| __ ______________________________ ___________ |_| |_| |B| |---------------A----------------| 60Hz vertical frequency 25.17/640 = 39.33ns/pixel = 25.4MHz pixel clock

21. VGA Timing Horizonal Dots 640 Vertical Scan Lines 480 Vert. Sync Polarity NEG Vertical Frequency 60Hz O (ms) 16.68 Total frame time P (ms) 0.06 Sync pulse length Q (ms) 1.02 Back porch R (ms) 15.25 Active video time S (ms) 0.35 Front porch ______________________ ________ ________| VIDEO |________| VIDEO (next frame) |-Q-|----------R-----------|-S-| __ ______________________________ ___________ |_| |_| |P| |---------------O----------------|

22. Relaxed VGA Timing • This all sounds pretty strict and exact... • It’s not really... The only things a VGA monitor really cares about are: • Hsync • Vsync • Actually, all it cares about is the falling edge of those pulses! • The beam will retrace whenever you tell it to • It’s up to you to make sure that the video signal is 0v when you are not painting (i.e. retracing)

23. Relaxed VGA Timing Horizonal Dots 128 Vertical Scan Lines ? Horiz. Sync Polarity NEG A (μs) 30.0 Scanline time B (μs) 2.0 Sync pulse length C (μs) 10.7 Back porch D (μs) 12.8 Active video time E (μs) 4.50 Front porch ______________________ ________ ________| VIDEO |________| VIDEO (next line) |-C-|----------D-----------|-E-| __ ______________________________ ___________ |_| |_| |B| |---------------A----------------| 60Hz vertical frequency 12.8/128 = 100ns/pixel = 10 MHz pixel clock

24. VGA Timing Horizonal Dots 128 Vertical Scan Lines 255 Vert. Sync Polarity NEG Vertical Frequency 60Hz O (ms) 16.68 Total frame time P (ms) 0.09 Sync pulse length (3x30μs) Q (ms) 4.86 Back porch R (ms) 7.65 Active video time S (ms) 4.08 Front porch ______________________ ________ ________| VIDEO |________| VIDEO (next frame) |-Q-|----------R-----------|-S-| __ ______________________________ ___________ |_| |_| |P| |---------------O----------------|

25. VGA Voltage Levels • Voltages on R, G, and B determine the color • Analog range from 0v (off) to +0.7v (on) • But, our pads produce 0-5v outputs!

26. VGA Voltage Levels • Voltages on R, G, and B determine the color • Analog range from 0v (off) to +0.7v (on) • But, our pads produce 0-5v outputs! • For B&W output, just tie RGB together and let 0v=black and 5v=white • overdrives the input amps, but won’t really hurt anything • For color you can drive R, G, B separately • Of course, this is only 8 colors (including black and white) • Requires storing three bits at each pixel location

27. More colors • More colors means more bits stored per pixel • Also means D/A conversion to 0 to 0.7v range

28. More Colors (Xess)

29. What to Display? • You need data to display on the screen... • Brute force: put it all in a giant ram that has the same resolution as your screen and just walk through the RAM as you paint the screen • More clever: Fill a row buffer with data for a scan line • Multi-level: Fill a (smaller) row buffer with pointers to glyphs that are stored in another RAM/ROM • Just keep track of where the beam is and where your data is...

30. CharROM

31. CharROM

32. CharROM 8 2 Fit the charROM into a VGA system - hVideo walks along the row - vVideo picks which row to walk along hVideo module HA[6:0] HA[2:0] charRom HA[6:3] Character Bus 6 Character Function A[4:3] 8:1 Mux T[7:0] nOE12 0 - nOE0 3 input AND 16 4:16 Decoder vCnt[7:4] 4 VidOut hBright vBright A[2:0] vCnt[3:1] vVideo module vCnt[7:1]

33. Two Lines of Text • Character Function… • 16 characters/line x 8 pixels/char = 128pixels • 6 bits to address a character • A[4:3] = row of CharRom • R[2:0] = column of CharRom • A[2:0] = row of character

34. RAM/ROM Generator • Designed by Allen Tanner 4 years ago as his class project... • makemem • Simple SRAM and ROM arrays

35. makemem 102 vladimir:~> java -cp /uusoc/facility/cad_common/local/Cadence/lib/mem/j makemem -h makemem v2.2 Nov 8, 2004 Allen Tanner University of Utah CS6710 Enter the following: java makemem choice options Where: choice selects the creation of either ROM or SRAM. for ROM enter:-r rname : rname.rom is the file name. : for SRAM enter:-s r c : Version 1 SRAM single port. for SRAM enter:-s1 r c : Version 2 SRAM single port. for SRAM enter:-s2 r c : Version 2 SRAM dual port. for SRAM enter:-s3 r c : Version 2 SRAM triple port. : r is the number of rows (decimal). : c is the number of columns (decimal). : :-h -H : help (no processing occurs when help is requested). :-f fname : output file name. Used with .cif, .v & .il files. :-n sname rname : sname for array top cell name. : : rname for ROM (only) dockable ROM array top cell name :-t n : use tristate buffers on the outputs of ROM. :-q : output hello.txt file to find the working file directory. 103 vladimir:~>

36. makemem Limits • Number of rows is limited to 64 by address decoder design • Columns are not restricted • For ROM you can add a tristate bus at the output which is another level of decoding • width must be an even number • SRAM has single, dual, and triple port options

37. ROM vs. Verilog

38. ROM vs. Verilog

39. ROM vs. Verilog

40. ROM vs. Verilog

41. ROM vs. Verilog

42. ROM vs. Verilog

43. ROM vs. Verilog

44. ROM size comparison

45. SRAM • Makemem also generates SRAM • Three different variants: single, dual, triple port • Each port is independent R/W • But, no automatic arbitration, so make sure you’re not using the same address on multiple ports

46. SRAM vs FF-registers module regfile #(parameter WIDTH = 8, REGBITS = 3) (input clk, regwrite, input [REGBITS-1:0] ra1, ra2, wa, input [WIDTH-1:0] wd, output [WIDTH-1:0] rd1, rd2); reg [WIDTH-1:0] RAM [(1<<REGBITS)-1:0]; // read two ports combinationally // write third port on rising edge of clock always @(posedge clk) if (regwrite) RAM[wa] <= wd; assign rd1 = RAM[ra1]; assign rd2 = RAM[ra2]; endmodule

47. Single-Port SRAM/FF

48. Single-Port SRAM

49. Two-Port SRAM/FF

50. Two-Port SRAM